PENTECOST TO DISPERSION: A Hypothetical Journey in Time
Bob Beanblossom
11 March 2018
Let’s do a mind exercise to help us better understand the Post-Pentecost Pre-NT church. Imagine, if you will, and if you can, a one-day seminar for Christians called the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ: The Definitive Application of His Ministry to Your Ministry. There will be four break-out sessions that last all day and do not repeat. Each has no syllabus, no text, no written papers or tests, and three visiting lecturers. Your entire understanding of the Christian life and the life of the church will depend solely upon the understanding you take away from this course. The Gospels and Epistles are still several decades in the future. Your memory, impressions, and notes, as well as the relationships you make in the class are the only sources that you have, in fact the only ones that exist outside the same contacts and experiences and notes other Christians have and will make. If you have friends with you, you may elect to have one in each session taking notes that you can share later.
If this sounds far-fetched, it is. Those first Christians did not have the advantage of even a one-day seminar, and many never even met an Apostle.
Our instructors will be two of the original disciples, Peter and John, and a newcomer who goes by the name of Paul. He used to be Saul when he was an enforcer for the Sanhedrin. The place will be outside Jerusalem in a safe area away from the religious persecution that Saul was so effective at, the persecution that scattered Christians around the known world, living their lives, making their income, growing their families, and telling the people that they met about Jesus.
Peter tells about walking and living with Jesus, the Christ; about the miracles He performed; and about his own ups and downs as a student of the Master.